I’ve just finished my second year in milk production and I have really enjoyed the challenge of the last two years. I am still in the process of converting from a beef and tillage enterprise to a spring calving dairy herd. I plan to have fully converted my farm by the spring of 2015.

I will admit I will miss not having beef cattle on the farm anymore but sentiment is a very dangerous thing when you are trying to run a profitable business. I used to take great pleasure in breeding my own stock and taking them through to slaughter. The problem was that the pleasure very quickly turned to pain when it came to working out what margin I had made on them.

Hard truths

Einstein once defined madness as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This perfectly summed up the merry go round that the beef industry had become for me. I was forced to ask myself some hard questions about my business.

Would beef farming allow me to fulfil my ambition to grow a business?

Would beef farming provide a comfortable living for both me and my family?

Would there be an opportunity in the future for one or more of my children to join me in the business?

Unfortunately the answer to all these questions was no, and something had to change.

When we looked closer at our enterprise we were forced to face up to some hard truths. Beef farming for us was totally reliant on our single farm payment to remain profitable and when we took away our SFP from our budgets, the business was in a break even position at best. With the expected reduction in our SFP it placed our business in a fairly precarious position.

It was time to take our heads out of the sand and make some decisions. We looked at all the different enterprises and dairying kept coming back as our best option mainly because it was the only enterprise that could potentially answer yes to all of the above questions.

Investments

We invested in a basic functional parlour with plenty of units and we also sold some of our suckler herd and, with the money they generated, invested in high EBI incalf heifers. Money was also invested into upgrading our grazing infrastructure.

We purposely channelled investment only into items that would put milk into the tank: parlour, cows, grass, water and some new cow tracks. We haven’t upgraded any winter accommodation yet and to be honest haven’t immediate plans to either. My priority is to get the business generating profit before I start to invest in any creature comforts.

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